The blog of Si Brown, a European artist who runs & climbs a little

Trekking poles, we know they can help whether uphill or down.We also know they’re often designed by Captain Complex; heavy, bulky and slow to set, or light and beyond flimsy.All this of course means many of us leave the things in the shop or at home.

These Trail Blaze poles from Mountain King may just change your mind.Super light(115-135g), fixed length(110-130cm), anodised alloy body, tungsten carbide tips, folding to about a quarter their open length(pic 1) and quick to rig they’ve got me using poles again.

First off, fixed length; why?An ideal pole length(we’re talking walking/running here, not skiing) has your shoulders relaxed and forearms around horizontal on level ground.These poles come in 5cm increments, so getting close to your ideal is easy.From experience adjustable poles just slow you down as you fiddle and faff.Fixed length poles quickly become a familiar, useful extension of your arm.I’m not even going to start on anti-shock systems… suffice to say I’m not a fan.

Right back to these poles.They come packed in a mesh bag, good for storage and packed transport.You get a set of spike covers, flimsy but okay as travel protectors until you lose them.The poles themselves are lightweight alloy, slotting together(a bit of Glide or similar on the insert helps) like a tent pole or avalanche probe. The simple locking mechanism a piece of 2mm cord up the middle, pull it tight, slip the knot into the catch slot and you’re ready to go(pic 2).

Simple modification with gaffa tape and elastic on of Mountain King Trail Blaze poles.

To knock them down is equally quick.A velcro loop just below the grip should hold the poles folded.But, one fell off in the bag, the other on a bus somewhere between Sheffield and Fox House.I’ve replaced them with an off the peg velcro strap.

The wrist loops and grips carry on the light and simple theme, a fixed reach through loop and a mesh covered foam grip.A minor gripe for me is I have big hands, the padding could do with being 2-3cm longer for comfort.Perhaps time for a bit of bodging. The grip though is still refreshingly basic, okay for comfort and functional(pic 4). On hot days, you might find a thin glove adds some comfort; this is true for any pole.

Hand grip/strap in use on Mountain King Trail Blaze poles.

The supplied baskets are a hard snow/ soft ground size; a bit large for summer.I found they caught and snagged in rocks and ground plants, both preventing a solid plant and easy lift.Thankfully poles are a standard size and smaller baskets are easy to find and fit(pic 5).You could always of course go basketless.

Supplied large basket and replacement compact basket on Mountain King Trail Blaze poles.

So to sum up, cons first:

If like me you have big hands, the grip could be longer.

The piece of velcro to hold the poles folded is rubbish; but so easy to replace.

The supplied baskets are too big; but again so easy to replace.

Like any pole, using them with a big bouldering pad is… comical for your companions.

Now the pros:

They are simple, a huge bonus when tired in remote areas.

These poles are light, easy to use and carry.

They’re made in Newcastle, and Mountain King offer a quick repair service.

A foreword? To a short piece? Yes, there are a couple of words in here that bear definition. One very old, one new. Both I think deserve more use.

Mogshade: an old English for the welcome cool shade cast by trees in leaf

Shivelight: a word coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins for the gleaming shafts of light shining through trees in leaf

The verses are haiku by Bashō, from Sumidawara, published in 1694

Now that’s done, let us away to the story…

… It’s late September now, the equinox is passed and autumn comfortably settled in after it’s brusque arrival.A time for sweatered evenings drinking hot chocolate, for listening to Vaughan Williams and remembering the sweltering summer now past.Blattering rain, from the winter’s first big storm, rattles down the window.

Memory drifts back to near midsummer, a rest day saunter at the quiet end of Borrowdale. There’s a massive Atlantic storm on the way, but I don’t know that yet. For now, all is calm and still.

Nestled in this welcome cool mogshade the pool rests, it’s surface planished metal mirror smooth.A settled calm for now bare stirred by flow of either air or water.

Spears of shivelight dapple the pool bed with rippling glimmers of brightness; each dapple studiously prowled by silverdark trout.In the bed thousands of ephemeropteran nymphs, avoiding the predations of stonefly, of alderfly, of damselfly nymph.A flickerdash and a prowling silverdark trout gobbles an ephemeropteran, a stonefly an alderfly, a damselfly nymph.

In the heavy air above each shivelight shaft plays host to a haze of ephemeroptera swarming in their frantic nuptial dance.All male, all desperate to attract a watching female into the swarm, to copulate.Blood red damselflies, hawking, flash from sunlit borders, through the shadows, disrupting the dancers’ chaotic order.Each flashing dash snatching a single dancer from the swarm.Oblivious, in the desperate rush to reproduce, the swarm reforms, the dance continues.In the seemingly stable column each individual ephemeropteran swirls ever lower to finally settle on, and cast eggs beneath, that mirror calm surface; their final act.A flickerdash of prowling silver dark trout makes an occasional encore, each ripple a transient ring and ditch memorial for the life of an insect.

The eggs, in their minute tens of thousands, sink safely to the pool bed, there to hatch, to bide for years as a nymph and one day on the wing.

And all these myriad tiny dramas play out in and above a glass clear relic pool, willow and alder shaded, cupped in the cut bank of a lazy meander. The Derwent still runs trickle dry in it’s rocky bed.A lone buzzard still wheels high in a bell clear sky, a cuckoo still calls somewhere unseen.The air still hangs quiet and becalmed, no breeze to relieve an enervating heat felt bone deep.

But, far out in the wild Atlantic a low pressure is deepening, tracking rapidly northwest.The beginnings of that massive storm I don’t know about yet. In two days the glass clear pool will be churned by sky wrenching gale and bank breaching flood as the now trickle dry Derwent runs full spate.

I am, at heart, a monochrome photographer. It is how I learnt the game with a home made enlarger in a spare room. It is still often how I visualise an image. Nowadays of course, with digital cameras we make our images in RGB and the Mac has become our darkroom. Though I still own, and use a clutch of film cameras, digital is my workhorse.

So I thought, a “How Si works” film would be fun to do.

The original photo was taken in Northumberland some years ago on an Olympus E3, with a 105mm lens. As usual, it was shot raw. I’ve processed it with my preferred editor, the photographer focused Capture One Pro. I would still much rather have used a Leica or Hasselblad, HP5 and a DeVere504 with Forte Polywarmtone though. Bach, Beethoven or Abba on the CD player too.

Oh, for the record. That building storm was a brute, powerful enough to batter the boats moored in Seahouses harbour.

That depends.What do you mean by climb, mountain and first?But that’s a philosophical path I don’t choose to tread here; for there lay sleeping Jabberwocks (in this gentle memoir they will remain untickled).So for this happy, as true as long ago childhood memory story, we’ll stick with a simple physical mountain (a lump of rock, mud, heather etc. over 610m altitude) on the Isle Of Man.

Away we go then, to August 1970 (relax, time travel works in our imagination), at Laxey tram station. Specifically the queue for the Snaefell Mountain Railway (actually an electric tram, but this is the Isle Of Man, so railway it is).And in the queue, with his beloved dad, there’s a very excited small boy; me.Always fidgety, this day I’m close to bursting.I am though on best behaviour (think Pooh holding Tiggerish energy in check) standing politely and outwardly calm.

This day, I’m going on an expotition (I’d discovered the Pooh Bear books, to this day I remain convinced the word is perfectly correct).I’m going to climb a mountain.Not just any mountain though, Snaefell, the highest mountain (yes, I know it’s technically “the only mountain”; shush, I’m seven here) on the island.I’ve been up there before with dad, but today’s special.Today if I’m judged sensible, I’m going to climb the mountain on my own.For a seven year old, an awfully big expotition. There are well worn boots on my feet, blue woollen socks tucked neatly into grey breeches. There’s a thoughtfully packed bag on my my back. A bag replete with compass, map, aran sweater, honey butties and something for the journey.That something for the journey is my well thumbed copy of The House At Pooh Corner (read on the tram from Douglas, ch6 “In Which Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In” probably).

TheSnaefell tram rattles in, the passengers shuffle off, we scuttle on. I grab a window seat, dad beside me and the tram rattles out.For the next half hour the book remains in my bag, unread. Instead I try to read the mountain landscape rolling by as we’re carried over 500m to the misty summit station.The tram rattles in, the passengers shuffle off. Most, realising it’s a little chilly here at around 600m, scuttle away into the cafe and gift shop.

Driver, guard, dad, a hopeful sheep and I are left in the wind shredded mist.

“You walking to the top with your dad?”

“No, I’m going on my own!”

“Oh; smashing.Well, have fun and we’ll see you on the next tram down.”

It’s all tremendously, excitingly real now.Driver and guard are suitably impressed (as this is the Isle Of Man neither think my plan odd) and dad’s happy.The sheep has lost interest and wandered off.A final show of the route and I’m away.Off on my expotition, I’m climbing a mountain, on my own.Carefully navigating, treading the familiar but now fresh path, one walked by thousands of feet before mine.A wide, clear path (though one people miss every year) winding gently around to the summit. I’m concentrating so carefully, stopped occasionally by stupendous views over to Scotland (never once of course spotting dad, in the mist, keeping careful watch) then vigorously striding out once more for the summit.

I can still, near half a century on, feel that slightly surprised calm euphoria (I’ve never felt one conquers a mountain or climb or descent) as I touched the trig point.I’d done it.My first solo summit.There were tourists, the radio station and a very troublesome sheep. To me it felt, there and then, the very wildest place on earth.Settling in a leeward hollow a celebratory honey butty and drink of water were lingeringly taken.As the descent was to come one butty was carefully saved for later. Lunch done, bag repacked, time for the second part of this expotition.Getting safely back down again.

Now, I’d been walking most of my life.This meant dad and I had a habit of descending, let us say, at pace (ascending too, where we could move quickly, we did).So away I went.A skinny, clumsy kid in boots and rucksack galloping past bemused tourists, casting occasional sincere apologies to the wind’s mercy.

Of course dad was sat waiting on the station bench as agreed.He’d waited there patiently since I set off (yeah, of course he did, I’m a dad now).Hugs and congratulations were exchanged, then hot milk and expotition report in the cafe.Drinks and debrief done we wandered out for the next tram down. The friendly driver and guard waiting there as promised;

“You do it then?”

“Yeah!”

“Well done young man.”

Smiling, they shook my hand in congratulation.I suddenly felt very grown up (sincerely given praise I still feel is important for children).

Somehow the tram whisked us back down to Laxey in the blink of an eye (yes, I know, the seven year old me fell asleep) to chicken and chips in the corner cafe.

So, in a pedantically technical sense not my first mountain.But in a truly practical sense (one that matters to me), very much my first mountain.

I’ve been in so many mountains so many times since, in so many ways.With my misfunctional mind, the best times are like that first time.Willingly alone, moving light and fast through the fells, my joyous, curious internal child grinning, a book and a honey butty in my bag.

But this evening, just for a little while, the parching eased.The long cloudbare sky became cloudspeckled.Clouds grew, darkened, grew rain heavy, some few precursor raindrops speckled the ground.The heat fell away from sweltering toward merely too warm, then the true rain came down.A sweet soft rain.A rain warm and rejuvenating, joyous to experience.As rain fell petrichor rose, that blessed aroma of hot, dry, rain slaked earth and stone.A beloved scent of summer calling back far memories of gilden* days amongst forests and fells from childhood on to now.

And then near quick as it came, the rain quits.The heat climbs back from merely too warm toward sweltering, the rain marks evaporate.Trees are still wilted, footpaths are still fired, grasses are still bleached.

But yet the air is no longer parched dry.It bears a lingering humidity, a memory of water.In a hawthorn a pigeon preens dampened feathers, beadlets of water bejewel the orchids.The sky, for weeks a cloudbare blue remains cloudspeckled.

A promise that maybe, just maybe, there will be rain once more.

*gilden: Middle English gilden; gelden; gulden from the Old English gylden. An equivalent to gold(+/-en). Yes, I like archaic language. And?

Some of the books from a dyslexic photographer’s bookshelf. Actually, all these books are mine, and all are well read. [sb009864]

Now, I’ll admit to a little bias here. Henri Cartier-Bresson remains an inspiration to me. He and many of his contemporaries like Lee Miller, Robert Doisneau, Bill Brandt and Eve Arnold combined great technique, visual awareness and a deep sense of our shared humanity. And they allowed the stories they told to speak.

Notwithstanding my personal bias, this is a sumptuous colection of portraits; the first to be drawn entirely from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. The ferocious aquiline face of Samuel Beckett glaring off leftward challenging you, open the book, see what he cares.

Beneath a building summer storm a lone tree; high on a lake district fellside.

A note to a possible reader. On prose, specifically mine, often the purple variety.

I make no apology, for none is needed. I love words. I cherish them. I love their variety. I love that old words are refound and ofttimes repurposed, that new words are founded. I cherish the practical magics words create.

Once I found passage through the wrecking reef shoals of ADHD and dyslexia, the wondrous richness of words became my refuge. When kept away from moorflank or riverbank, whether by school or by overbearing mother, I took sanctuary in books, into a wordworld of the imagination. The library, with the aid of an understanding father and a librarian who turned a knowing eye, and with that eye an occasional suggestion, that library became my portal; Narnia’s wardrobe in Portland stone and oak and brass and compassion.

And so I grew up in company with, amongst others; Durrell, first Gerry later Larry; with Rebufatt and Whymper; Eyre and the Brontes; Pope and Dryden and Montaigne. Modern times they’re joined, again amongst others, by Macfarlane, Shepherd, Baker, Deakin, Calvino, Pratchett and Gaiman.

However, when recalling worlds to mind, or growing worlds in the mind of another. No, not here. When writing the experience of long fell day’s, for the flickering silvered nacre braids of a dipper bobbed stream: then the wondrous richness of words is where I play.

There you are dear reader, if you like occasionally florid nature and mountain writing, for to my mind the two are inseparable…

My friends at Accelerate running shop Have been running a video competition as part of their Shake Up. I was rather pleased, and a little unnerved, to be asked to judge the entries.

Here’s the winning entry, from Sheffield based artists Callum and Mikk Murray.

I’ll openly declare here, I know and like Mikk. This film won because of the three entries we received, I feel it best fills the competition brief. The film tells a coherent story, a story about what a part of our running world feels like.

They’ve shown the varied running environment we enjoy, the film tells a story, and it features the shop itself. For those who don’t know the area, Mikk starts off running high on the moors at Burbage North Bridge. This is, remarkably, still in Sheffield and the valley is maintained as one of the city’s parks. The film created journey, from those wild and windy moors through our still thriving industrial city. Callum and Mikk’s film, through this journey, showcases the superb variety of trail running we have in our home city, from fell through country to urban. And it finishes at the shop, where the usual greeting is being passed; a mug of your favourite drink.

The soundtrack, Flow, from Oren Dji fits well without being obtrusive. There’s enough volume to hear it clearly, the mood of the song fits well with the quiet nature of the film. A personal note here, there’s more to (adventure) film soundtracking than rad thumpin, bangin rock, rap and house choons. Be genuinely radical, experiment, explore the worlds of sound out there.

For most of us northern Europeans the city is our natural environment. But, being runners, we can daydream over a morning espresso, maybe a piece of lemon cake too. This is one such daydream.

Despite our deserved reputation for heavy industry the city is woven through with, hemmed around with, ribbons of woodland and river and field. You can run from the horrors of Meadowhall shopping centre almost into the city centre along tree lined canal or river barely touching tarmac, although the remains of that heavy industry surround you most of the way.

To be fair, many cities have such hidden areas, get your shoes on and go explore your local patches. Enjoy your own escape

Part of my Running Shorts series. The film was shot in and around my home city of Sheffield; the outdoor city. It’s shot on an iPhone6, sometimes with Olloclip lenses, edited in iMovie. The main soundtrack is Country Boy, composed by Ben Tissot, bensound.com

Post navigation

Oh, hello…

Welcome

I’m an artist, mainly working with still photography, video and line drawing.

Posts on here, in line with my interests, revolve around natural history, fell running, mountain travel and morsels of modern life in northern England. There may well be a touch of centre-left politics. Oh, and books too.

Here on my blog you’ll find the longer, more involved pieces. On Twitter and Instagram are shorter, more immediate posts, including announcements of new blog posts.